‘Yes.’

‘So, all you have to do is to tell the police that. I’m sure Alexandra has got the number for Unwin and Gupta, and she’ll be off the hook.’

‘Yes,’ Walt said. ‘Yes, I can do that for Ally. Set her mind at rest.’ Instantly casting himself as the knight errant rescuing the damsel in distress.

‘You said, incidentally,’ I continued, ‘that you didn’t see your rival coming out of the building in Brunswick Square?’

‘No,’ he admitted.

I couldn’t stop myself from saying, ‘Which was hardly surprising, given that he didn’t exist. But, more interestingly, did you see anyone else enter or leave the building?’

And Walt Rainbird finally told me something that almost justified his existence on this planet.

Having finished the two telephone calls, I was still, of course, parked in Dorking. I started the Yeti to drive back to Chichester.

But I was stopped by a tap on the window. Phil Dickie, on his crutches, was alongside me. I opened the window.

‘I saw through the window that you were still out here,’ he said. ‘Were you planning to make a return visit to the studio?’

‘No. Sorry. Just doing a couple of phone calls.’

‘That’s serendipitous perhaps.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, I was thinking, after you left, of something I didn’t tell you … about when the car bomb went off in Beirut … about Ingrid.’

‘What didn’t you tell me?’

And Phil Dickie revealed something that, along with what I’d heard from Walt, made a whole lot of details fall into place.

TWENTY-THREE

It was dark by the time I left Dorking. And I didn’t go towards Chichester. There are times when being on one’s own, with no kids or pets or husbands living at home, is a positive advantage. I was now so emotionally caught up the mystery of Ingrid Richards’ death that I knew I had to go straight up to London.

And I would have gone straight up to London but for a road crash, which didn’t, I’m glad to say, involve me and the Yeti. The only damage done was to my plans for the evening. I’d decided, foolishly, to go on the M25. Driven from Dorking to Leatherhead and got on to the motorway with no problem. I was just congratulating myself on how little traffic there was when everything ground to a halt. Absolutely solid.

Walt Rainbird had suffered a delay at Polegate of a quarter of an hour. Mine, near Leatherhead, took rather longer.

I checked the AA Traffic News on my phone and discovered there had been a ‘major incident’ on the M25 clockwise just before Junction 10. Never found out the details, whether anyone had been killed or injured. All I know is that I sat in the Yeti, unmoving, with the same car in front of me, the same one behind and the same ones either side, for over three hours.

By the time the traffic started moving again, it was far too late for me proceed with the rather vague plans I’d made for the evening. I would have to stay somewhere in London and reschedule for the morning. But where?